Our thriller borrows conventions from several media products: Salt inspired the strong female protagonist who fights off attackers using combat skills. Fight scenes used long continuous shots and different camera angles. The Last of Us provided the idea of a young female sneaking up on and fighting older males, subverting expectations. The Bourne series suggested developing a mysterious protagonist with dark clothing and unknown background. Overall, Salt was the primary influence, providing inspiration for the protagonist, fight scenes, and subverting gender stereotypes through a capable female action hero. Various conventions were developed and challenged from these reference works.

1. Evaluation Task 1
In what ways does your media product
use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
By James de Winton

2. Introduction
• In what ways does your media product use, develop or
challenge forms and conventions of real media
products?
• The first media product that we developed/challenged
conventions from was Salt. First off the film was a
thriller and a good one too, so we knew and took
inspiration from the film. The film also contains many
conventions to it that can relate to our thriller, because
the film gave us ideas for our thriller, without stealing
the film entirely. We got other ideas from the last of us
(video game) and the Bourne series (film).

3. Salt (Film)
Salt is a movie which follows
lead character Evelyn Salt, a
CIA on the run as fugitive
after being accused as
Russian spy, Salt must now
try to prove here innocence
whilst trying to remain out of
CIA’s sight.

4. Syncorp (Our Thriller)
Our thriller opens with a young
women working in industrial
kitchen. Two janitors appear late
at night and with guns, she kills
them both with their own
weapons by attacking them
individually after they separate
and using the element of
surprise. Her combat skill’s
surpass both of the men who
were sent to kill her.

5. Theme – Salt
The themes of salt include ; Action,
close action fight scenes, disguises,
incognito.
We challenged the themes of
incognito and fight scenes in our
thriller. We developed lots of the
characteristics of the lead
character from Salt with our
thriller.

6. Plot conventions
Both story's follow a lone female
character with little help. Both
characters being chased by a larger and
more powerful force. In Salt, she is being
chased by several men making her
outnumbered.
In our thriller she is outnumbered not
only by numbers but also by age, height
and also weapons. She has to fight with
her bare hands to survive and escape.
Both of these thrillers protagonist fights
there way our of a situation using
cunning and skill. Both characters start
of with no weapons but finish with them
proving they have succeeding by taking a
mans gun.

7. Character conventions pt. 1
In Salt the protagonist is a women
who is a CIA officer. She is
competent in defending herself and
fighting off enemies. She is a
trained is combat and is a
nightmare to deal with.
In our Thriller the protagonist is
also a female who is also
competent when it comes to
defending herself against enemy's.
They both have skills, strength and
power. Salt was the main reason for
us to cast a female and portray her
as a stronger character then the
males, so we developed this idea
and put it into our.

8. Character conventions pt. 2
In both thrillers the protagonist is a
women. Salt gave us the inspiration
to choose a female character in our
thriller because it subverts from
the stereotypical man.
Furthermore both characters have
some similarities between the two.
Firstly they both have black hair
which in my opinion suggests skill,
intelligence and cunning, for
instance if you had a blonde hair
girl that would be more of a school
girl style. Furthermore both
characters dress well, they both
have their hair done, makeup and
are dressed smart. Salt inspired us
to do this because we wanted the
opening of our thriller to have
more of a slick style to it.

9. Character conventions pt. 3
Furthermore both characters have
a similar personality in the way
they move, their looks and their
facial expressions. If you see here
in the picture they both have the
same facial expression when they
both wield a gun. The expression
being that they both have serious
looks.
We wanted our character to show
the same professionalism and
seriousness about her as Evelyn
Salt did the the film Salt.

10. Camera (Salt)
In Salt they have lots of fight scenes, in
some of them they shoot it with a
handheld and its one long continuous
shot. Not only that but also they use
different shots and different types for
some fight scenes.
In our thriller we used two types of shots
for each one of our fight scenes. In our
first fight scene we used one long long
continuous shot which was shot with a
handheld. In the second shot we used a
collection of different shots from
different angles.
Salt gave us some inspiration to do a
continuous one shot long fight scene
shot with a handheld because we felt
that Salt made it look good. We decided
to work with these conventions.

11. Action (Salt)
The action scenes in Salt have lots of
hand to hand combat and don't have
lots of gun shoot outs, even though
there is a lot of gun use, a lot of the
action is hand to hand based and ends
with a gun being fired, we developed
this idea as so.
In our thriller we didn’t just want lots of
gun shots being fired around the place.
We decided on having a fight scene
between the two in each fight and then
having the hitman for that fight being
killed by his owed gun after being
disarmed.
This is like Salt because in one of the
fight scenes, Salt must go in incognito
style, she then fight them hand to hand,
takes their guns and kills them with it.

12. Plot Convention pt.1
The men chasing down the protagonist in
Salt are mostly men, they are all tracking
down a female character. In our thriller
there are two males tracking down. She
is outnumbered, furthermore the gender
chasing her is stereotypically considered
to be a more dominant force. The
pursuers are failing for a large majority of
the film to catch Salt, which means the
film subverts from the gender stereotype
that men are more competent that
women.
We liked this idea for our thriller because
it was different, so we decided to make
the pursuers/hit men in our thriller men,
so that it would subvert from the
audience.

13. Plot Convention pt.2
The victims in Salt are almost all
men. They all get overpowered
by salt or someone and killed. In
our thriller the victims are both
men.
Furthermore you could argue
that Salt and the lead in our
thriller are also victims. Salt is a
victim of being setup, therefore
making her a victim to false
intelligence. Our lead is a victim
because she is working late
doing nothing wrong and then
suddenly gets attacked be two
hitmen.

14. The last of Us (Video Game)
The last of Us follows two main
characters a man named Joel and a
young girl named Ellie. The video
game is set 20 years after a zombie
like fungus/bacteria broke out and
caused an international pandemic.
The pair now have to travel across
the USA to find the resistance.
We took inspiration from this
because Ellie is a young girl who
fights against older men and often
wins, subverting from the stereotype
that men are better then women in
combat. Not only the character but
also the location, as you can see in
this picture from the Last of Us, she
is sneaking behind a counter in an
industrial style kitchen to attack the
older male.

15. Character Conventions
Ellie in the last of us is a young girl
however she has the mind of a
independent strong women, as she
fights alone or at the least with a bit
of help. Also she fights against men
who are a lot older then her young
age.
We developed the idea that she is a
young girl on her own into our
thriller. Furthermore the
characteristics of Ellie is very sneaky
and incognito, so we developed this
idea to put it into our thriller.
Moreover we challenge the
characters movement when behind
counters, etc when trying to remain
hidden.

16. The Bourne series
The Bourne series is a thriller
movie series. It follows Jason
Bourne a dangerous and skilled
government agent who has
sudden amnesia and cannot
remember anything about his
past. The series follows Bourne
trying to find out more about his
past and what he used to do
whilst being tracked down by the
unknown agency that he used to
work for.

17. Character conventions
We decided to develop a few of
Jason Bourne’s characteristics and
personality into our thriller. For
instance we developed the fact that
he is a mysterious character like with
our lead, as we don’t reveal much
about herself and her background in
it. Furthermore Jason Bourne's
fighting skills we developed however
we got lots of inspiration from Salt as
well. Moreover Bourne’s dress’s in
dark color to make him seem more
mysterious, we liked the idea of this
convention so we decided to develop
it and put it in our thriller.

18. Conclusion
• Overall I feel that we developed various
character conventions and ideas from these
different media products and in different
ways.
• Salt was definitely the main media product
from which we took inspiration from,
especially when it came to our thrillers
protagonist and the fight scenes.